Understanding the Federal Budget

Note: Although I try to keep GRS a politics-free zone, today’s topic is inherently political. I’ve stayed as neutral as possible in the article, but I know that there’ll be some political discussion in the comments. Please keep conversation civil, as always.

Recently at The Simple Dollar, Trent posed the question, “How much do taxes matter to you?” As might be expected, his readers responded with passionate comments from both sides of the political spectrum. The discussion frustrated me, though. There’s just too much misinformation, and people offer their opinions as if they were facts.

I’m as guilty as anyone else.

Because my own education on this subject is weak, and because I want GRS readers to be informed, I spent twelve hours last week researching a variety of tax topics. From this research, I’ve written two articles: this one about the U.S. budget, and a second part about taxes, which I’ll publish next week.

These posts are meant simply to be educational. There’s no takeaway other than knowledge. We cannot have informed discussions about taxes and government spending if we don’t have the baseline information. These two articles record my attempts to discover that baseline information.

Note: Though I’ve done my best to be accurate, I’m sure there are errors in this post. As they’re caught, I’ll make corrections.

To begin our discussion of taxes, let’s examine the state of the U.S. budget.

The U.S. Budget
The U.S. budget is complex, and it’s the source of much political debate. Some argue that we should cut our military spending and use the money to fund a national health care system. Others argue that nationalized health care is the road to socialism, and that we should reduce our current government health programs. Others simply want to cut all government spending. But how much is actually spent where?

All of this information is overwhelming. To make the numbers easier to understand, Jess Bachman produces an annual Death and Taxes poster, which attempts to visualize the entirety of the federal budget. The poster contains over 500 programs and departments. The size of each item on the poster is proportional its budgeted amount.

The Death and Taxes page allows you to zoom around and look at sections of the poster from within your web browser. There’s even a “quick find” feature that allows users to look up the sections that interest them.

You can also order the poster, of course. It’s $24. When I asked Bachman for permission to use excerpts of the poster in this article, he went above and beyond for GRS readers: Order two or more posters and get 50% off when you use the code ‘slowly’ at checkout. Yes, that’s essentially a “buy one, get one free” deal. Order one for yourself, and give the other to your local high school history department.

From the “Death and Taxes” poster, here’s a glimpse of the total U.S. national budget:

Although this says “2008 federal budget”, it’s actually for 2010.

Even though this image simplifies things, it still took me a couple of minutes to understand it. The penny in the middle represents receipts — from taxes and other sources. The big black chunk missing from the penny is the budget deficit. The government has to borrow this money to stay afloat. The colored circles around the outside edge represent where the government is spending money. Again, the area of each circle is proportional to the expense. (I have no idea why the equation [Outlays = Receipts + Deficit] doesn’t balance. Can someone explain?)

Looking over the budget, here are some datapoints that interested me:

The Department of Defense has a budget of $534 Billion, which is 37.5% of the overall $1421 Billion discretionary budget. (What does “discretionary budget” mean? See the next section of this article.)

I’ve always thought the Department of Homeland Security was a sort of boondoggle. Looking at its $41.383 Billion budget, however, I see that it was basically created by shuffling agencies from other departments. Customs and the Coast Guard are a part of Homeland Security now, for example.

The Department of the Interior, which is home to programs like the National Park Service, etc., has a budget of only $12.007 Billion. That seems really low compared to some other parts of the budget.

NASA’s budget seems low, too. Is $18.686 Billion per year really going to provide a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime? We’ll need to raise that budget if this geek is going to have a chance of dying happy. (I can dream, can’t I?)

The United States Postal Service has outlays of $78 Billion, most of which are covered by fees. About 5% ($3.776 Billion) of the agency’s budget comes from tax dollars. This is much less than I would have guessed.

The Department of Education has a $46.69 Billion budget. Of this, $29.64 Billion (63.4%) is for Special Education and Education for the Disadvantaged.

If looking at the budget poster online is overwhelming, you can scan the spending on various departments in this data-only list of budget spending (it’s just a blog post, so it’s not too daunting).

As someone who has served on a small-town budget committee, I guarantee you that each of these government organizations — both the ones you support and the ones you don’t — can provide rationalization for every penny they receive. In fact, they probably wish they had more money to work with.

But as a taxpayer, I wish I had more money to work with, too.

There’s a balance to be found here. And it’s arguments over this balance that create divisions among our political parties and lead to tirades about taxes.

Discretionary Spending
You may have noticed that the U.S. budget is divided into discretionary spending and non-discretionary spending. What’s the difference? In my personal budget, non-discretionary spending (or mandatory spending) includes things like the mortgage and utilities and essential food. Discretionary spending includes videogames and comic books and restaurant meals. But what does it mean for the government?

Mandatory spending (or “direct spending”) is required by law. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs (such as Unemployment Compensation, Food Stamps, Student Loans, etc.) are mandated by law. Our elected officials must change the laws before they can change spending on these items. These programs are sometimes referred to as “entitlements”. If you meet the requirements for a particular program, you’re entitled to receive benefits.

Each year, as a part of the budgeting process, the President and Congress negotiate discretionary spending. Whereas entitlement programs are ongoing, most discretionary expenses require annual renewal. Requests for discretionary spending are made via an annual appropriation bill, which authorizes the government to spend money. Discretionary spending covers programs like the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the Peace Corps — and the military.

The Congressional Budget Office data breaks discretionary spending down further. In this chart, I’ve retained the mandatory spending line, but split discretionary spending into three categories: defense spending, domestic spending, and international spending. Again, these numbers are graphed as a percentage of GDP:

Both defense and domestic spending increased under President Bush. I suspect they’ll both increase under President Obama, as well. How much of this is due to each man’s political philosophy? How much is due to the political and economic exigencies of their time? I don’t know.

Here are total U.S. government budget outlays as a percentage of GDP over the past 80 years:

To me, it looks like President Clinton is the only one to systematically reduce spending.But as several commenters have noted, there are other factors to the 1990s reduction.

Despite fiery rhetoric from both sides, no one political party can honestly claim to be anti-spending. I think that most of us understand that some government spending is necessary — we just worry about the degree of spending that occurs.

It’s a fine thing that citizens want to keep government spending in check, but it’s important to note that just because you don’t want or need a program doesn’t mean that there aren’t other citizens who want or need it. (I was raised in a “peace church”, for example, and so am naturally opposed to military spending. Yet I recognize that for most U.S. citizens, this is a high priority. I’ve learned to temper my upbringing with the knowledge that mine is not the majority opinion.)

Although this is a long article, it provides only a cursory glimpse of the U.S. budget. It doesn’t even begin to touch the subject of where this money comes from! Tune in next week for the second half of my research, in which I try to uncover the truth about taxes.

Postscript: Here’s a new New York Times editorial from Warren Buffett, in which he writes that recent deficit spending was justified to save the economy, but cautions that government needs to be prepared to pull back on spending or risk making things even worse. In order to ward off inflation, Buffett says, “Once recovery is gained…Congress must end the rise in the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio and keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources.”

Update #2: I amended my Bill Clinton statement. As several commenters have noted, there are other factors to the spending decline during the 1990s, including an expanding economy and a Republican-controlled legislative branch. Also, Ginger-Kathleen sent e-mail asking about government salaries. The President makes $400,000 per year and has a huge expense account. Members of both houses receive $174,000 per year.

Graphs courtesy of me. Images courtesy of Jess Bachman, creator of the Death and Taxes poster. Bachman is generously offering a deal for GRS readers. Order two or more posters and get 50% off when you use the code ‘slowly’ at checkout. “It’s basically buy-one, get-one-free,” Bachman says. Thanks, Jess!

That poster is an excellent resource. I knew our deficit was huge and it worried me, but I didn’t know it was that huge. Looking over all of the other little budget circles, I’m visualizing that chunk missing, that chunk that we don’t have enough to pay for.

I find my own little city’s budget to be more interesting because I can see (or not see) how the money is spent. The money I pay in taxes to my city, county and other local taxing authorities (i.e. health care district, water, etc.) provides the police, fire, road, sidewalk repair, parks upkeep, the local library etc.

Here in Florida we just received our initial tax estimates and while values have gone down the city and county are increasing millage rates to try and collect the same amount in taxes. So while values are down, people’s pay is down, taxes will likely remain flat. I think the city and county got used to the real estate bubble and undertook contracts with the unions and other projects that are now too expensive but the city/county doesn’t want to cut or doesn’t believe they can cut.

I have to live within my means but the government can keep increasing taxes, not fair in my mind.

Very interesting post on government spending – I hope some enterprising Canadian blogger does the same for Canada (too much work for me).

One point about spending as a percent of GDP – the GDP is not constant, it goes up in good times and falls in recession. Spending tends to be more constant so you will often have an increase in spending as a % of GDP during a recession even though the actual spending hasn’t changed (or might have gone down).

This is shown most clearly in the “Budget outlays as percentage of GDP” chart for the early 30s when the GDP went way down. The chart goes up in 2008, 2009 but that reflects a smaller GDP as well as more spending.

The early 40s has a large spike which I assume is from increased wartime spending.

I think that if you want to compare spending patterns for various regimes then you should look at actual spending amounts adjusted for inflation and population changes.

Thanks J.D.
This is a lot of great information that isn’t always easy to find. I’m not sure that Bill Clinton actually reduced spending, though. GDP zoomed under Clinton. I think he just didn’t increase spending as fast as the tax receipts increased. As for me, I could very easily wave goodbye to NASA without shedding a tear. I think people get so incensed over taxes because they have different beliefs about what a government should be. I have somewhat libertarian leanings. Military spending is one of the few areas I feel the government should be responsible for. Many of the other areas on the budget should be the responsibility of local governments, industry, individuals, families, and charitable groups. If the government were run this way, taxes would be pretty low. Of course, the libertarian presidential candidates usually only garner 3 or 4 percent of the popular vote, so maybe not everybody sees things my way (-:

I fall closest in line with the “cut all spending” mentality though there’s a few areas in which I’m ok with moderate government spending. I do find it interesting that our military is our highest expenditure. I’m all for having a strong military defense but I’d love to see more funding for things like science and medicine and less for military.

I think things like health care, national forests, and even education could be handled better as private institutions with government oversight rather than being directly managed by the government. More along the lines of the FDA. They make sure that proper procedures are being followed but otherwise allow business to be run as normal.

I might do the following:
1. Get rid of the horizontal grid lines. The actual numbers on that axis aren’t important, just the direction.
2. Get rid of the years and add on Presidents instead. Put very faint horizontal grid lines for Presidents. This would pull out any differences caused by the President.
3. Currently, you use the same color for “Defense” as “Mandatory Spending”. I’d change that.

Studying our federal budget is a real eye opener. I was a no question proponent of gov’t health care until I learned that half of all gov’t spending is non-discretionary spending…and as our population ages, this is expected to increase dramatically. Cutting discretionary spending is not enough to overcome these increases. I’m not sure what the solution is but it is clear that some change is in order.

@Lara (#7)
I know that most people could wave good-bye to NASA without shedding a tear. But I’m a geek, and a science-fiction geek at that. Space exploration goes to the heart of my being. It’s an irrational thing, maybe, but it’s something I support.

Anyhow, thanks to you and Tracy and Four Pillars for suggesting that spending as a percentage of GDP may not be the best way to graph budget-related topics. All of the government data, and most of the non-government data (some of which I use in next week’s tax post) is provided in GDP-relative format, so that’s what I use. I don’t recall seeing inflation-adjusted real numbers (though it’s possible they were there). GDP-relative seemed like a reasonable measure, and the data was there, so I used it. I can understand how it might be useful to have other views as well, though.

I’m with Lara. I think many things are important, but I don’t take it the step further to think that the federal government should be responsible for funding. I think retirement is important, but I disagree with Social Security. I think education is important but the Department of Education is a joke. What has the Department of Energy done that couldn’t be done in industry or under Department of Defense?

Wise Money Matters said science and medicine are important and I agree, but I DON’T THINK THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE PROVIDING THE FUNDING. Science and Medicine advance too fast for the government to be responsive, and government funding systems don’t encourage innovation (in fact many times they discourage it because if you solve the problem your funding dries up) nor are they efficient. I want scientists, engineers, and doctors deciding where money goes rather than politicians.

I would also like to point out the very common misconception that you perpetuate in this post: THE PRESIDENT DOES NOT WRITE THE BUDGET. The House of Representatives holds the purse strings. The president is a nice figurehead that acts as a lightning rod for both good and bad spending. The president approves or vetoes the budget just like other bills, but he can only give his YES/NO to what is offered by Congress. Remember the government shut down under Clinton as well? That was a standoff because Congress wasn’t giving him the budget he wanted. I agree that both major parties have spending problems, but credit the right parties with the right actions.

J.D., The reason why Outlays – Receipts does not equal Deficit is because I use the ‘on-budget’ deficit figure. What the government does is take all the surpluses from Social Security receipts each year and uses it to subsidize the rest of the government, its about $150 billion a year. Officials use the off-budget deficit figure in public because it looks lower, but ignores the building SS deficiency. If I used the off-budget deficit figure too, it would add up.

I think citizens are taxed enough, our politicians should “make do” with what we send them. This of course means that before we enact any further spending, we need to make massive cuts. I am frustrated when I hear politicians and pundits claim that increased revennue (more taxes!) is a foregone conclusion. Why can’t they just figure out how to prioritize all of our programs and live with just the programs that we can afford, and cut the rest? If we need government-provided healthcare, and it’s a higher priority item that other current budget programs, then make the necessary cuts to pay for it.

I am really impressed with this article! You addressed truth in a plain common sense way without stepping on the toes of any political party.

Could you do some looking in to monetary policy as well? Right now my understanding is that the US government pays the Federal Reserve (which is more private than federal) with bonds. The bonds raise in value over time while the dollar decreases in value, this creates a debt that could not be paid off with every US form of money from around the world. To my knowledge the only president that has ever eliminated the debt was Andrew Jackson who also got rid of central banking. I know this could be a lot of work, but I can think of a lot of people that would benefit from learning whats true and whats myth on monetary policy.

Kris, Not seeing the pictures might be a setting in your browser, you might want to uninstall and re-install or check your security settings. I actually do website testing and I checked this page and the graphs work on both Mac and Win for firefox, internet explorer, safari, and chrome.

Thanks for a very informative post. I have also researched this in the past and been too frustrated to sort through it all, so thanks for doing that.

I would be very curious to also see a graph of the deficit’s percentage of GDP over the years, since there is so much discussion of us “not paying for what we’re spending.” (That is not a new phenomenon.)

Like you, I think some things are more worth it than others in the budget, but that’s the curse, and blessing, of living in a civilized society. People act like the big bad government is some entity out THERE, but the reality is we live in a democracy where we elect those who represent us, and even though majority rule sometimes sucks, it beats the alternative!

@Jess
Say what? I guess on some level I knew the government borrowed against Social Security, but I never understood what that meant before. In a personal finance context, that’s like borrowing against your Roth IRA in order to fund your current year’s spending. I DON’T LIKE THIS.

@Kris (#2)
For esoteric reasons, images are no longer stored on the GRS server. They’re stored on the server for my personal site. I’m willing to bet that for whatever reason, your browser is blocking stuff from foldedspace.org. In order to see images, let foldedspace.org through.

Now, for fun, go through that giant poster and try to identify all the expenditures that are actually authorized by the Constitution in the specific enumerated list of Congress’ powers in Article 1, Section 8.

After all, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Right?

Perhaps the largest challenge that this data represents is its enormous complexity combined with the lack of communication with the public at large, which creates desensitization and complacency.

In other words, most people pause for just a moment then shrug off the projections for $9 trillion deficits over the next ten years. “What’s another one or two trillion? Oh well, on to my cup of coffee…”

We are all guilty — not just politicians — of not learning and/or communicating the ramifications of our budgeting decisions. The internal dialogue is something like this: “If it doesn’t harm me directly, I can pass the problem on to someone else; therefore, the size of the problem is not my problem.”

Thanks to JD for at least communicating the challenges…

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” ~ Plato

I’ve been trying to understand the state of U.S. finances. My gut says that spending more than we have is self-destructive–even for a big country. I’m looking for facts.

I came upon I.O.U.S.A., a really interesting non-partisan documentary that I got from Netflix. This is not the first time in history that the U.S. has had a huge debt. It is the first time that the U.S. government has borrowed from foreigners instead of its own people. You can see a free abbreviated version at http://www.iousathemovie.com.

To extend a bit upon what Shara said (comment #12)… regarding spending under Clinton (or any other president), we must remember that it’s the legislative branch that controls spending. In the mid 90s, the Contact with America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America) played a major role in the budget process during the latter half of Clinton’s presidency — a time when we actually had federal budget surpluses. Those were the days.

While the president does influence spending, ultimately, all spending bills originate in Congress. And when Congress is controlled by the competing political party, the president’s budget aspirations may not be entirely met. For this reason, the article “National debt by U.S. presidential terms” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms) doesn’t tell the full story.

@Rob 14 – the reason that programs can’t be prioritized is because the federal budget has to be passed by the Senate, the House, and the President’s office. Each of these groups (and each member within each group) has different priorities. If at any point there is less than a clear necessary majority, it goes back to the drawing board.

Our congressmen almost never agree on what is ‘not important’, because our citizens almost never agree. So the budget grows, because it is easier to add programs and deficit spending than it is to cut programs that someone likes. Hell, I don’t need a missile defense system in Alaska, but someone thinks they do, so we have one. Shara @12 doesn’t think we need Social Security, but most people receiving it think we do, so it continues to exist. Same for every dollar on the chart.

I was surprised to see that our debt interest alone is >$150 billion for one year.

I think it would be interesting to see spending of other countries, in terms of “per capita”. Are we one of the few countries with just huge spending per capital? Discretionary spending alone is ~$4,600 per person given the numbers in the post. I would assume that mandatory spending would be much larger than this.

trb, I am sure that you are correct. As far as I am concerned, there should be no deficit of any kind and citizens are taxed enough (too much, actually). So, our dear leaders need to figure out how to reconcile these two items before any further spending is even considered. Kicking the can further down the road without really solving the problem doesn’t do any good.

But the chart you show is federal spending as percent of GDP. On usgovernmentspending.com the chart is federal+state+local spending as a percent of GDP.

Over the last ten years federal spending has been about 20 percent of GDP and total spending has been about 35 percent of GDP.

The whole point of usgovernmentspending.com is that you can’t get an understanding of government spending by just looking at the federal government. You need to look at the whole picture: federal, state, and local.

You say “I was able to create a graph that shows that discretionary spending as a percentage of the U.S. GDP (gross domestic product) peaked in 1982, and then fell under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.”

Am I alone in seeing that the graph says that discretionary spending peaks in 1968 and then falls until 2000? Or are you saying that since Reagan, it reached a peaked in 1982 and then fell until the beginning of George W. Bush’s term? I’m just a little confused on that one.

Scientists do actually decide where the money goes. I work at a lab in an academic institution. NIH (National Institutes of Health) just gets a funding amount. Then, once grant proposals are submitted they are reviewed by other scientists in field. The federal government doesn’t really have much control over HOW the money is spent, but just how much they give.

Ooooh… that just set a light off in my had. Since last week, I’ve been unable to visit GRS or the forums. using Firefox on my home PC. I get a server disconnect error. Occassionally, the main page of the forums will load (without any stylesheets or images), but I can’t get into any of the categories. It works with IE, so I figured a Firefox upgrade had broken something. I was unaware you’d moved some things around. I’ll check my AdBlock settings when I get home and see if “foldedspace.org” happens to be on any of the default blacklists.

I access this site from my work computer. I can’t see the images either. I went to foldedspace.org and, as it turns out, that site is blocked by my employer’s WebSense filter. If it was ever an option to change where your images are housed, JD, that would be really wonderful. As it is, I turn up on a “violation report” every time I view your site for this reason.

Since this is a inherently political topic, I’ll make a quick point to head off oversimplifications: because discretionary and mandatory spending costs do not show up all at once the year the bill is passed, but come up in the following years, one has to look at when the actual spending bills were passed and by whom, rather than when costs actually hit the accounting paper.

This means charts that simply tell how much money was spent per year are not particularly helpful in showing us what decisions actually led to the costs.

Strange. I’m baffled as to why foldedspace.org might be blocked for some people. Des, can you tell me what a “violation report” is for your web filter? I’ve never done anything remotely evil with any of my sites, so I’m not sure how they could be blacklisted. Do you also have trouble accessing images at jdroth.com?

I didn’t realize this was an ongoing issue or I would have found an alternative solution by now!

JD–I think it would be a great idea to also include some comparative data from *other* countries about their federal budgets as a percent of GDP.

Many of us have the impression that the US is a highly profligate country, and admittedly we are above average in that category, but there are lots of countries (including Japan!) that are much worse off.

Also worth noting that among the countries with the lowest debt to GDP ratios there is a very high incidence of countries that have flat taxes. Gives support to the counterintuitive (and ironic) conclusion that high taxes create surpluses in the short term, but in the long term they create deficits–apparently politicians can’t resist spending the money and then some….

@Daniel (#37)
Great idea. If I have time today, I’ll do it. (I have to write tomorrow’s post first, plus I have the podcast.) Next week’s post on taxes does have a comparison chart that shows the tax burden in 30 countries as a percentage of GDP. It’d be interesting to see budgets as a percentage of GDP, though.

If anyone has free time, you could save me a little work by finding the raw data on other countries’ budget vs. GDP.

It’s already been noted the effect during the Clinton years was due to a very spending adverse directed Congress. While it was Republican led I think they’re all dogs! ; ) Although you have to add in the enormous effect of the dot com boom that pushed increases in the GDP to amazing levels.

Note that at the rate we’re going under the combined Obama/Democratic Congress we’re very likely to see the largest increase in the history of the country. Notice the enormous spike! Add to that the healthcare fiasco and most likely within 12-24 months we’ll see inflation like we did during the late 70′s/early 80′s. Won’t that be fun to have interest rates for mortgages back up to 15-20%??! Hey, at least our savings account will have larger returns.

Wow JD, GREAT research!!! This is one of the most informative posts I’ve read online.

You’re right that ” no one political party can honestly claim to be anti-spending”. All politicians have an incentive to SPEND LIKE THE WIND. If you don’t spend your budget, you lose it. There are no rewards for being fiscally prudent.

In a nutshell, what matters most is the interest rate we have to pay others to fund our OVER SPENDING. That interest rate is in the form of treasuries. I’m impressed and AMAZED foreigners still want to buy our treasuries with the 10-yr yield at only 3.5%, but more power to us!

Since money is still so cheap, it’s up to us to ALSO spend like the wind! Regarding taxes, everybody is ok with high taxes so long as it doesn’t affect them. I for one am looking to buy Nevada property now, so I don’t have to pay 10% to California so they can flush it down the drain towards bankruptcy.

In fact, I write about buying Rental Property today. I think it’s a good idea if you are younger to buy some rental property now, have someone fund it over your working life, renovate, and then move in and establish residency, especially if the rental is in one of the 7 no income tax states.

For anyone following the news of the Augustine Commission (per the request of President Obama, the commission is reviewing the current NASA manned spaceflight plans, and if feasible with the current projected budgets for NASA), they are agreeing with you JD – manned spaceflight will NOT meet the current goal of developing spacecraft and rockets to send man to the Moon by 2020 and to Mars in the future with current and projected funding.

On the same thought, comments like Lara’s make me sad – NASA (and the space race) is the reason we have Velcro and the microprocessor.

“that’s like borrowing against your Roth IRA in order to fund your current year’s spending”

Not really, since Social Security is not a savings program. Current receipts pay current benefits. Right now, wage earners pay more in taxes than is required to pay current benefits. At some point in the future, about 2018, that will change and benefits paid will exceed the social security taxes collected. Then money from other taxes will have to be used to pay part of the Social Security benefits and that spending will show up as a larger deficit.

The “social security trust fund” is largely a bookkeeping construct. It tells us when the amount paid by other taxes will equal the excess paid by current social security taxes. There is nothing that says the government has to stop supplementing social security with other taxes at that point. In fact, there is nothing that says government has to start supplementing social secuirty payments from other taxes just because it collected more social security taxes than it has spent. Those are decisions Congress has made and can change.

We elect politicians to decide how much we will be taxed and how it will be spent. The real danger is that we fail to make the public investments required to have increased productivity. Because with a smaller percentage of the population working, we are going to be in a world of hurt if they aren’t more productive than we are. Just as we are more productive than our parents in large part because of their investments in public infrastructure.

Just a suggestion, but a post this long and this cumbersome with details should be a Saturday or Sunday post. As I pop in on my lunch break to see what’s happening on GRS I know there is no way I’ll ever be able to digest the information here in the short amount of time that I have. Maybe I can get to it tonight……………..

My take on Clinton is that he wised up after the mid-term smack-down in his first four years when his program to dramatically expand the government was shot down. It was the fortuitous circumstances of fiscally disciplined (at least at that time) Republicans and a strong economy that he didn’t fiddle with too much that helped him stumble into a balanced budget. Sad to be a witness to what has happened since then. Makes me think divided government is best for the country.

If nothing else the posters emphasize the need to dramatically reduce the size, complexity and scope of government… not to mention spending.

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